When sleep teases and then says au revoir, my mind tends to wander in strange territory. Tonight it was paper-pulp byproducts. I knew that the "black liquor" byproduct of papermaking (which contains the lignin) is usually burned, but I didn't know if it had been investigated as a fuel for gasification (which would allow production of power, methanol, F-T hydrocarbons, or any combination).

Pity there's only about 170 million tons of black liquor solids produced annually worldwide, compared to 1.3 billion tons of waste biomass in the US alone. For some reason, I'd hoped for more - why, don't know.